


Complications

by Mothfinder_General



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mothfinder_General/pseuds/Mothfinder_General
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lysandre's doctor is a very unusual man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Are you sure you shouldn't go to see a doctor? There might be... complications."

Professor Sycamore look down at his wrist with interest. "Complications, mon ami?" he repeated. "You mean... my hand might drop off? My entire arm might develop neon purple gangrene? I'll suddenly develop virtuosic skills on the piano?"

Lysandre pursed his lips. "Don't be flippant."

"What complications are you _expecting_ from a sprained wrist?"

"Complicated ones," said Lysandre darkly. "Anyway, aren't you finding it rather inconvenient? All the things you can't do... write with a pen-"

"I type," said Professor Sycamore, and absentmindedly dipped a sugar lump in his coffee before eating it. Lysandre frowned and said, over the noisy crunching,

"There are other things too, I'm sure. You're favouring your left hand, I've noticed. You must still be in pain. I'd like you to see my doctor tomorrow. He'll have a look at you and ensure there aren't any... complications."

In any other circumstances Professor Sycamore would have laughed and brushed this offer off, but he was too busy trying to hide his blushes from Lysandre. 'Other things' that a sprained wrist hindered, oh yes, there were 'other things' alright, and cold showers didn't help.

 

Lysandre's doctor had an office along the rue Pauline Réage, in an enormous and imposing building attached to the Fleur-de-Lis Labs research facilities. It took Professor Sycamore twenty minutes just to work out which of the lifts to use to get to the right floor - each individual lift seemed to have a special destination of its very own, which it was pursuing to reach the very pinnacle of its liftness. Weird medical modern art stood around in corridors, hinting at strange tortures and wonderful cures in their execution; rooms like 'Studio of Bees' and 'Metallic Theatre' were signposted, but the Professor had no idea what they were supposed to be.

He was half an hour late for his appointment and the room was quite dark. Merde, thought Professor Sycamore, standing in the doorway, the doctor must have gotten bored and left.

"Augustine Sycamore?" said a voice from the gloom. Professor Sycamore started.

"Yes, mysterious voice?" he said.

"I've been expecting you. Step in, please."

Professor Sycamore edged into the shadows and let his eyes adjust.

There was, in fact, a little light. There was an old-fashioned projector at the back of the room, which had run through its reel and was now quietly stuttering half-penumbras over a white screen on the opposite wall. The vague light glinted off a pair of narrow lenses which were (Professor Sycamore realised) attached to a face.

“You may switch on the light,” said the voice drily. “I was merely passing the time with a little… homemade film. It’s to your right. Reach out now. Ah, I see what he meant about the way you moved.”

“Excusez-moi?” asked Professor Sycamore, and flicked the light switch.

The room was instantly illuminated, and so was the pale, slim, bespectacled man sitting in the chair in the middle of the room, his legs stretched out in front of him and his neat ankles crossed. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt, rolled at the sleeves, a grey waistcoat and grey trousers. He did not move but merely hitched his mouth into a faintly mocking smile.

“Your wrist,” he said. “Lysandre mentioned that you moved your right hand very gingerly, as if sparing the wrist. How long has it been like this now?”

“Three days,” said Professor Sycamore. “Look, it’s good of you to see me, Doctor, eh, Doctor…?”

The doctor looked at him over his glasses and didn’t say anything, so Professor sighed and plunged on, “…but I don’t need anything ‘seen’ to, not really. Not unless you had any of that powdery stuff that makes sour things taste sweet, that always goes down well at parties.”

“Sit down, please,” said the doctor, indicating the chair opposite him with a lazy wave. He still hadn’t moved. He was very blonde, with white, papery skin and unnerving light eyes, and Professor Sycamore caught himself wondering whether the doctor was a projection himself, who would splinter into shadows and highlights if he moved.

He sat down anyway; he didn’t seem to be able to get out of this check-up, and presumably this was some of the best and most expensive medical treatment in Kalos, which might explain the weirdness and rudeness.

“Take off your jacket,” the doctor added, and Professor Sycamore, like most people faced with a medical professional, did as he was told. “Now, tell me how you managed to sprain your wrist.”

“Oh, it was quite a foolish accident,” said Professor Sycamore breezily, settling back. He liked telling this story because it involved a Garchomp, and he liked Garchomps. “You see, I’m a Pokémon professor, and I spend a lot of time with Pokémon. Now, I was testing the reactions of a Garchomp who had been hatched, in a hilarious muddle, by a Delcatty. And I’m sure you know the old nurture vs nature argument, anyway, this poor creature thought it was a Skitty, just a big, noisy, loveable Skitty, so whenever we got a ball of wool out –”

“Skip to the part where you damaged your wrist,” said the doctor, a little testily.

Professor Sycamore said, “I fell on it,” and then settled back for a good long sulk.

The doctor leaned forward abruptly. “Remove your shirt,” he said.

Instinctively, Professor Sycamore reached for the buttons at his shirt, but then he hesitated. “Why do I need to remove my shirt for a sprained wrist?” he asked.

The doctor stared at him hard over his glasses. “Oh, were you not warned? Lysandre was worried there might be… complications. You are getting a full check up.”

“Mon dieu,” muttered Professor Sycamore, but he started to unbutton the shirt anyway. When it was fully open, he wriggled his shoulders and sat upright. The doctor was leaning forwards, his elbow on his knees, but he hadn’t made any attempt to move closer.

“Remove it entirely.”

Professor Sycamore removed it entirely. The hairs on his arms prickled. He wasn’t cold, he realised; he was nervous.

The doctor moved suddenly towards him, like a hunter leaping on its prey. Professor Sycamore jumped.

“Be still, please,” said the doctor, and produced a stethoscope, which he put in his ears then applied to Professor Sycamore’s chest. It was freezing. Professor Sycamore winced and could have sworn that, at the wince, the doctor pressed harder.

“Hm,” said the doctor. “I see.”

“Quoi?” asked Professor Sycamore, bewildered.

“Lift your arms, please,” said the doctor, turning away and taking the stethoscope out of his ears. “I’m going to give you a support for your wrists.”

“Can I put my shirt back on?”

“Not yet,” said the doctor, with a hint of a smile in his voice. He had his back to Professor Sycamore and was rummaging around in a drawer, under a display of glass eyes. Really, it was a strange doctor’s surgery – it looked more like an office for a psychopathic artist.

When he turned back, he was holding a handful of red rope.

“Good god,” said Professor Sycamore, and tried to stand up. The doctor moved surprisingly fast, though, and with one fluid movement had pressed him back into the chair and taken up both of his wrists.

“Put your hands together,” he said, “as if you were praying.”

“Er.”

“Twine your fingers together… good. Hold still, please. This is a delicate art.”

He proceeded to bind the stunned Professor’s wrists together, his fingers moving as delicately as a violinist’s.

“Is this necessary?” asked Professor Sycamore, but the doctor, intent on his work, didn’t respond.

When he was done, he looked back, admired his handywork with his head on one side, then said, “Come into the next room.”

Professor Sycamore hadn’t noticed the door, but when he did, it loomed large in front of him. There was indeed another room, and unlike this one, it was still unilluminated. He could make out a white-sheeted bed against the wall. In any other circumstances, he would have refused, but the man was a doctor, after all. And he did have a very firm voice.

He trotted into the room, followed by the doctor, who (thank goodness) did not close the door behind him.

“Lie down on the bed,” the doctor instructed, and this time Professor Sycamore really hesitated.

“You are having a full check-up,” the doctor repeated, with a sort of dangerous flatness. Professor Sycamore sat reluctantly on the edge of the bed, then yelped when the doctor seized his ankles and swung them up onto the bed, shoes and all.

“Monsieur, I must protest!” he exclaimed, from his recumbent position.

“You must, must you?” muttered the doctor. “Tell me about Lysandre.”

Professor Sycamore blinked in the darkness. “What?”

“Lysandre. Tell me about him.”

There was a snapping noise and Professor Sycamore looked up. The doctor was pulling on a pair of latex gloves. It was a surprisingly disturbing sight.

“Er, what to say,” he quavered, staring at the gloved hands as the doctor came closer. “Lysandre and I are friends...”

“Indeed?” said the doctor. “Good friends?”

Red and black images danced in front of Professor Sycamore’s eyes. “We have an understanding,” he said, staring at the ceiling.

He felt the doctor’s fingers graze his stomach, then swore sharply and sat up as the man started to unbuckle his belt.

“Oh, lie down,” sighed the doctor. “I’m a doctor. You don’t think I’m enjoying this?” He pulled down the Professor’s flies, parted the jeans, and started to daintily tug at the underwear.

“Arrêtez,” said Professor Sycamore, hypnotised. “Mon dieu. What are you doing?”

“I am doing as instructed,” said the doctor cryptically. “Believe me, if I had to choose my patients, you’d be a lot more… female. Now, what do you mean that you and Lysandre have an understanding?”

“We have,” Professor Sycamore began, then gasped as the doctor’s gloved fist took his cock in hand. “We have- that is, we have a rather unusual friendship, I sup-p-p-pose…”

The doctor, with an expression of genteel boredom, had started to tug at the Professor’s cock. He had, Professor Sycamore thought, the hands of a consummate professional – firm, cool, disinterested and astonishingly efficacious. He was already starting to get hard even though he didn’t want the doctor to do anything to him except go away.

“In what way?” said the doctor, in that same dry voice, as his working hand sent arrows of pleasure deep into Professor Sycamore’s crotch.

“We are- that is- he and I- we are- I am- I feel- about him- I- feel very- strongly- about him- I- go faster…”

“I’m amazed,” said the doctor, in a very unamazed voice. “You were all frowns and fidgets until we started to talk about him, and now you’re as pliable as warmed-up toffee. If only all my patients were so malleable,” he added with a sigh. “If you had arrived early enough to see my little film… but never mind. What’s better, there or there?”

“There!”

“Yes, so I see, you’ve started to _salivate_ , as it were, from your glans. What a mess you are making. Wouldn’t Lysandre disapprove?”

Professor Sycamore gave a shuddering sigh. He had no idea whether Lysandre would disapprove or not, but he really, really wanted to see what Lysandre would look like, standing over him and disapproving of his hard, flushed, dripping cock. He wished the doctor would go away so that he could think about this in private.

As if reading his mind, the doctor withdrew his hand. “I think that’s quite enough,” he said, starting to take off the gloves. “If you would wait here, please…”

And with that he turned on his heel and shut the door, leaving Professor Sycamore in total darkness.

The Professor lay there are thought, what the fuck just happened and why am I so horny.

He tried to make out shapes in the blackness, but all he got were swirls of dark on dark. He felt very exposed. He supposed he was. He was topless and his cock was out and his wrists had been tied together, all he needed to be more exposed was a target painted on his arse.

Outside, in the doctor’s office, he thought he could hear low voices in conversation. He strained to make it out.

As if in reaction to his attempted eavesdropping, the voices fell silent. He heard nimble footsteps – surely the doctor’s – walking away, and the sound of the outside door shutting. Then there was more silence, a waiting, weighing silence, and more footsteps.

These were approaching the door to his dark secret room.

Whoever it was outside stopped outside the door for a few seconds. Professor Sycamore turned his eyes up towards the ceiling (though he couldn’t see a thing) and found himself bringing his bound wrists to his lips, as if pleading. _Please_ , he thought, _please please please please…_

The door opened just a crack, cutting the shadows of the room in half. Professor Sycamore rolled his eyes towards the door and saw an unmistakeable silhouette.

“Lysandre,” he said, though his voice came out cracked.

Lysandre, framed by the weird light of the doctor’s office, said nothing, but stared at him with an expression of exhausted hunger.

“Lysandre,” he said again, but could think of nothing to say. Or rather, he could think of everything to say, a lot of things, all sorts of things, but he couldn’t work out which of them he wanted to say first.

In the end he settled on, “Why did you ask him to tie my wrists together?”

“Because,” said Lysandre, “I didn’t want there to be any… complications.”

And he stepped in, and shut the door behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Professor Sycamore didn’t mind sex dreams, as such. He could even put up with it when they turned into wet dreams. But he did mind those sex dreams that he couldn’t remember, which he would only be consciously aware of when he shuddered awake in the early hours of the morning, the last spasms of his orgasm dying away, his thighs all sticky and nothing but a vague black cloud where his recent dream-memory should be.

 

It wasn’t the sticky inconvenience that bothered him, although it was a chore and it made him feel like an adolescent, or the fact that he’d brought himself off on obscured and elusive lusts. The thing that disturbed him was the way that his subconscious desires were awoken by the most bizarre, unpredictable things during his waking life.

 

He’d be studying a Tentacruel in the Kalos aquarium with some post-grad students on a perfectly normal work day, when out of the corner of his eye he’d see the undulation of tentacle, lazy twisting flicks among the twisting seaweed, and he’d feel a sort of prickle in his crotch. He’d go to a bonbon shop to buy some salted caramel and, watching the taffy machine pulling and folding rainbow-coloured taffy, he’d find himself hypnotised, his nipples hardening. He went to get his hair cut on Wednesday and as he was sitting in his chair chatting vaguely about nothing, the barber had solicitously adjusted his chair to make him more comfortable and the sensation of the chair components moving against his back had given him an erection. (He was so grateful for the towel that had been draped over him, to catch the clippings.)

 

He _knew_ it was because these everyday things reminded him of something in one of the sex dreams. But he didn’t remember his sex dreams, so he didn’t know _what_ they reminded him of, or worse, _when it would happen again_.

 

It started to make him incredibly anxious. He got so nervous about it that when he was at a dinner party one evening and the song ‘Sexual Healing’ came on, he had to feign a migraine and leave.

 

He asked his doctor for sleeping pills.

 

His doctor was on the university medical faculty, a kind, brisk woman named Dr Sisamaphone. “Well, what seems to be the problem, Gus?”

 

“I have these dreams,” he explained.

 

“Bad ones?”

 

“I don’t remember,” he said earnestly. “But they keep on leaking into waking-time, if you see what I mean. Mon dieu, I feel like a cracked pot half the time.”

 

Dr Sisamaphone did not see what he meant. She was a woman who strongly distrusted the metaphors of illness.

 

“I’ll prescribe you some low-strength pills,” she said, “but I really think you need to speak to the counselling service.”

 

Professor Sycamore had no desire to speak to the university counselling service. In the end he steeled his resolve and tried the only doctor who he thought might be able to help.

 

This particular doctor treated his friend and sometime colleague Lysandre, and worked from a large private hospital and research clinic on the rue de Pauline Réage. He called the hospital and made an appointment with the doctor for the following Tuesday – the receptionist had a lilting South Kalosian accent and they spent a happy twenty minutes talking about how much they missed their hometowns in South Kalos and how the were definitely going to get out of Lumoise and visit their dear old mamans soon, only there was always so much to be done, wasn’t there…?

 

The following Tuesday, he turned up at the hospital and finally put a face to the voice on the phone. She was very cute, about twenty, with a soft strawberry blonde pageboy haircut and a chipped front tooth that was peculiarly endearing.

 

“I think the doctor’s in the dark room,” she fluted, “but you can wait for him in his office. Do you know the way?”

 

“I think so,” said Professor Sycamore carefully. He’d been once before; it had been a strange experience.

 

After a few false starts, which included accidentally finding a room filled with nylon thread attached from wall to wall and wandering through a bizarre labyrinth of mirrored screens, he arrived at the doctor’s consultation room. The door was closed. He knocked.

 

He waited for a few seconds and then, to his frank surprise, the door banged open and the doctor himself stood there.

 

“Er, bonjour,” said Professor Sycamore. “I, er, didn’t think you would be in, docteur.”

 

“But you knocked anyway,” said the doctor coldly. He was in his usual crisp white shirt and grey waistcoat and he was holding a small machine of some sort in his hand. He held his body very still, as if suppressing some internal agitation.

 

“Er, yes,” said Professor Sycamore. He cleared his throat and tried again. “We had an appointment?”

 

“You are mistaken,” said the doctor. “I am seeing another patient.”

 

Professor Sycamore glanced at the weird tool in the doctor’s hand. It looked something like a wand and something like a bell, with several rings at the bottom which looked as if they operated something – one of the rings has plus and minus symbols etched on it.

 

“The receptionist at the front desk made the appointment,” he murmured. “I’ve seen Lysandre,” he added.

 

This was true. He and Lysandre had had coffee only yesterday. Strictly speaking, it didn’t have anything to do with the appointment, but there was no harm in mentioning it.

 

The doctor treated him to one of his bright, pale stares. It was like having a torch flashed in his face. Then, without another word, the doctor turned around and stalked back into his consultation room. Professor Sycamore shrugged and followed him.

 

The consultation room was empty, but the door to the room that Professor Sycamore would forever think of as the ‘other’ room was shut. He glanced over and saw a white coat hung on the hook outside, two stiff cloth wings hanging from each perfectly cut shoulder. It looked familiar.

 

“This way, please,” said the doctor sharply. He was standing in front of a bookcase, which, at his magisterial touch, swung open to reveal _another_ room – leather armchair, whiskey on a table, gilt-edged mirror, anglepoise lamp at a desk. It was a bijou little gentleman’s club, for a single gentleman (except for the faint but surprising scent of women’s perfume). Professor Sycamore stepped in after him.

 

“Thank you for seeing me,” he said pleasantly, and the doctor made a stiff, irritable gesture with the odd machine.

 

“Well?” he said shortly.

 

“I’ve been having dreams I don’t remember but they bother me when I’m awake.”

 

“You recall nothing of the content?” said the doctor.

 

“No, nothing at all.”

 

The doctor considered him briefly, then in two steps was suddenly nearly nose to nose with him. Professor Sycamore blinked, alarmed. The doctor raised a thumb and pulled down the lower lid of the Professor’s eye.

 

“Um, ow?” Professor Sycamore volunteered.

 

“Interesting,” the doctor muttered. “How long have you been having these dreams?”

 

“A few… weeks? Ah, could you let go of my eye, please?”

 

“Since you were last here?”

 

Professor Sycamore shivered. The things that had taken place in the ‘other’ room had the high-coloured, hallucinatory quality of a dream anyway. It crossed his mind that stepping over the threshold of the doctor’s office was a bit like plunging abruptly into REM, as if the door was a gateway to a part of his brain, looped in on itself and hardened into physicality.

 

“What does milk taste like?” asked the doctor, tilting his head and checking the other eye.

 

“Like, like milk?” said Professor Sycamore, alarmed. Then he thought about it. “Actually, some food has been tasting a little… different to me.”

 

“Like chalk or like cotton?” asked the doctor.

 

“More like, uh, cotton, I suppose.”

 

“How’s your breathing?”

 

“Regular, but I get a pain under my ribs sometimes. You know, like I’m being prodded? It’s so annoying.”

 

“And your temporal perception?” Professor Sycamore gave him a blank stare and the doctor sighed loudly. “How’s your time-keeping?”

 

“I feel… faster, but I seem to be doing everything more slowly,” replied Professor Sycamore.

 

The doctor stepped back. “Lift you arm. Now lower it, slowly. Roll you shoulders. Hm.” He considered Professor Sycamore, unblinking. “Well, there isn’t any medicine that will help you.”

 

Professor Sycamore was crestfallen.

 

The doctor had turned away and was opening a cupboard. He brought out a narrow white box.

 

“Take this,” he said, “and see if it helps.” Professor Sycamore took the package gingerly.

 

“What is it?”

 

The doctor’s brief smile was as sudden as a papercut. “Ask Lysandre,” he said. “Now, please get out of my office. I have a patient to see to.”

 

+++

 

Professor Sycamore took the package home and opened it in his bedroom. It contained a sort of giant rubbery plastic flower with a hole in the middle. He turned it over and over in his fingers. It was like an obscene Venus flytrap.

 

He phoned Lysandre.

 

“Bonjour, mon ami,” he said. “Your doctor has given me some sort of horrible tacky piece of modern art. I didn’t know he collected modern art. A man with such nicely-ironed shirts, he should have better taste.”

 

“I always enjoy the way your conversations start with the verbal equivalent of a kick in the ankle, Professor,” said Lysandre drily. “Let’s try again, shall we? Bonjour. Ça va?”

 

“Oui, oui, ça va, but you should see this thing.”

 

“I’m very well myself, thank you for asking,” said Lysandre. “Now. What did you want?”

 

“I’ve been having weird dreams and I’ve been feeling odd lately and he poked me in the eyes and gave me an ugly tube.”

 

He heard Lysandre breathe out slowly. “Could you call me on the Holo Caster?”

 

“I don’t really understand how to use the Holo Caster you gave me…”

 

“Figure it out,” said Lysandre, and hung up.

 

It took about ten minutes for Professor Sycamore to switch his Holo Caster on and another three minutes to find his contacts list and call Lysandre (one of four people he’d managed to add).

 

“Look!” he shouted once he’d gotten through. “Look at this weird thing!”

 

“Please stand back,” said Lysandre wearily. “You don’t actually have to push it into the holographic projection of my face, which I know is exactly what you are doing. Ah, yes. I’ve seen those before…

 

“What’s it supposed to be for?” asked Professor Sycamore. “How does one apply its medicinal properties to oneself?”

 

“You’ll find a switch at the bottom,” said Lysandre, then refused to offer any more information.

 

Professor Sycamore turned it over and over in his hands. “A switch?” he repeated, mystified. “It has to be switched on to work?”

 

He found the switch eventually. It felt oddly plastic and flimsy, as if it were added as an afterthought, and for a couple of seconds nothing happened. Lysandre’s holographic face watched him in a stony silence.

 

“Oh, it’s moving!” Professor Sycamore exclaimed, his voice full of delight. “Ça marche!”

 

“Yes indeed,” said Lysandre, whose voice had gone strangely flat.

 

Professor Sycamore put the Holo Caster down on the bed and carefully inserted his finger into the tube.

“What does that feel like?” asked Lysandre, in the same flat voice.

 

“Like… squeezing,” said Professor Sycamore, curiously. “Hey, I think a light came on…”

 

“Does it feel… warm?” asked Lysandre. There was a hint of a catch in his voice. Professor Sycamore wriggled his finger around.

 

“Alors, yes it does! Is that the light? Gosh, it’s like a sort of massage in here, it moves like-”

 

Like something rippling underwater, he thought.

 

“It’s supposed to… soothe you,” said Lysandre, whose voice really did sound like something plastered over a crack now. “It’s a sort of… tension-reliever. Hold it against your stomach, it’s nice and warm… Do you like it?”

 

“It tickles,” said Professor Sycamore. “Am I using it right?”

 

“Let me see… Can you turn to face me a little more?”

 

Professor Sycamore shifted round on the bed. “How’s this?”

 

“No, you need to move it a bit lower… no, lower than that…”

 

“If I move it much lower, Lysandre, we’re going to be in a situation where I have to start charging you.”

 

Lysandre bit his lip. “Lower, then.”

 

Professor Sycamore raised his eyebrows. Then he glanced at the strange tube.

 

“Lysandre,” he said, “what did your doctor give me?”

 

“Take of your jeans,” rasped Lysandre abruptly. “Quick.”

 

Professor Sycamore felt as if the temperature in the room had gotten a lot higher, very suddenly. He obediently unbuttoned.

 

“Face me,” said Lysandre, his voice taut. “Show me how you’re using it.”

 

“I can’t, Lysandre, I’m embarrassed…”

 

“What are you embarrassed about?” asked Lysandre. Only his head and shoulders were visible in the holographic projection, but his shoulders were moving in a furtive way that suggested fumbling off-screen. “Are you embarrassed to show me that you’re enjoying it?”

 

Professor Sycamore’s fingers had gone all cold, but his palms were hot and shaky. With the bit of his mind that was still functioning, he thought, isn’t it funny, the way the body reacts to extreme emotion? Why did my hands evolve the ability to feel hot and cold at the same time, to tremble like this?

 

“Yes, I’m embarrassed to show you,” he whispered.

 

“But I can see it. I can see the outline. I can see that little damp spot there, where you’ve started to drip because you’re enjoying it so much. Why don’t you show it to me, Professor? Why don’t you show me how much you need some treatment?”

 

Professor Sycamore managed a smile. “Are you going to treat me?”

 

“Oh, I’ll treat you. You’ll get treats. I’ll treat you how you like to be treated.”

 

Professor Sycamore put the warming, rippling tube down on the bed and pulled off his underwear. When he touched a finger to the bead of pre-cum that had formed on the tip of his cock, it clung to his fingers, as sticky and delicious as taffy being pulled.

 

“Lick it off,” he heard Lysandre command, and he obediently stuck his fingers in his mouth. “You’ll need some lube. You have some, don’t you?”

 

Professor Sycamore nodded, blushing.

 

“I knew you would. I’ve sometimes thought about what you do to yourself when I’m not around…”

 

Professor Sycamore managed to fumble his lube out of his bedside drawer without making too much of an idiot of himself.

 

“Show me how you apply it,” said Lysandre, whose off-screen arm was definitely moving.

 

Professor Sycamore took a deep, deep breath.

 

He worked the lube along the length of his cock, moving with exaggerated care. He was rocking very gently back and forth into his hand, obeying the compulsive rhythm of his lust.

 

“I think you know what to do now, don’t you?” said Lysandre.

 

“I’ve been suspecting it,” said Professor Sycamore. “Shall I tell you a secret?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I suspected it the moment that you asked me to call you on the Holo Caster.” Finally, Professor Sycamore raised his eyes and met Lysandre’s through the projection. “I know you’ve been thinking about me, mon ami.”

 

He saw Lysandre bite his lip harder, a subtle flush to his ears, a sudden shyness to his blue eyes. He kept his eyes locked on that suddenly unmanned face when he pushed his slick, dripping cock into the desire machine’s single hole. The machine convulsed around him and he groaned instinctively.

 

“Is this what you think about?” he managed.

 

Lysandre’s hard breathing could be heard over the Holo Caster, crackling. “All the time… oh you’re so nice…”

 

“Do you dream about me?”

 

“Yes, Professor, I do… lovely red and black dreams, all about you…”

 

“I dream about you too,” said the Professor, and he realised that this was true. It all came back to Lysandre. Even as he started to push himself in and out of the fleshlight, he found himself remembering fragments of the dreams. The things he wanted from Lysandre haunted him day and night, it made the ordinary into the erotic, it charged every moment.

 

“You see how much I want it?” he told Lysandre, panting. He wet his lips, moaned, started to thrust quicker into the wonderful machine. “Oh! You see how well I know to pleasure myself? Oh god, it feels so good… oooohhh… I want it so much, look how badly I’m craving it… ooohhh…”

 

“Drive- yourself- in,” said Lysandre, his voice coming in sharp bursts. “Push- hard. Let me- see you- work for it.”

 

By this time, Professor Sycamore had lost the ability to talk dirty and was just moaning in time to his thrusts. The amazing thing between his legs squeezed and rippled. He shut his eyes and watched multi-coloured Catherine wheels go off behind them.

 

“Ask- my- permission- when- you- want- to- come.”

 

“Oh, Lysandre, s’il vous plaît, let me come, I’m so close! Let me, please let me!”

 

“Yes-” said Lysandre, “yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes-”

 

Professor Sycamore wasn’t sure whether Lysandre was giving him permission or just getting close to coming himself, but he couldn’t hold back any longer. With an ecstatic sob he arched his back and spurted hot, wet spunk into the depths of the machine.

 

A few seconds later, he yelped.

 

“Fuck a brick, Lysandre, how do I turn it of?!”

 

Lysandre’s hologram was wet-lipped and gasping, with a woozy, post-orgasm opacity to his eyes. But when he heard Professor Sycamore howling, he blinked, focused and started to laugh.

 

“It’s not fucking funny! Argh!”

 

“Flick the switch. Merde alors, it’s meant to be user-friendly.”

 

A brief wrestle, some smacking at the switch (which, once again, reacted several second later) and Professor Sycamore was free. He threw the fleshlight to the ground and examined his aching, twitching cock as gently as he could.

 

“How is it?” asked Lysandre, his voice still brimming with amusement.

 

Professor Sycamore huffed at him. “If my days as the Casanova of Kalos are over, I’m going to take this thing and I’m going to ram it up that doctor’s arse.”

 

“Before or after you empty the reservoir?”

 

“Ah, Lysandre, never have I been unhappier or more horrified to hear the word ‘reservoir’.” Professor Sycamore gave the machine a sidelong glance. “I think after. I get the impression your doctor doesn’t actually have any bodily fluids of his own. He’s like a piece of flawless, evil origami.”

 

Lysandre smiled. “Oh yes. That reminds me. I must call the doctor and thank him.”

 

Professor Sycamore was gingerly pulling himself back into his clothes, wincing when the cloth touched his hard-worked cock. He looked back round at this. “Thank him?”

 

“Well. He’s an excellent diagnostician, non? He knew exactly, uh, what was needed.”

 

The two men shared a bashful smile and adjusted their respective clothes. Professor Sycamore cleared his throat.

 

“Are we going to talk about this?” he asked.

 

“This?”

 

“All… this. The things that have been happening. This.”

 

Lysandre sighed. “I’m afraid ‘this’ isn’t as simple as it looks.”

 

“Is anything?” Professor Sycamore ran his hand through his hair. “Alors… perhaps we can talk about this face to face. Over a coffee. In my house. At night.”

 

He paused. “There may not necessarily be coffee,” he added.

 

Lysandre raised an eyebrow. “We shall see,” he said, but Professor Sycamore caught the flicker of excitement in his eyes.

 

“Perhaps tomorrow. Au revoir for now, then, my friend.”

 

“Au revoir. And, Professor…?”

 

“Mm?”

 

“Did I ever mention that the model you were using isn’t actually operated by a switch? It’s remote controlled. À bientôt.”


	3. Chapter 3

SUMMER

 

Malva was looking for the perfect rose.

 

“Non,” she said, “this is a little too… how can I say… peach?”

 

The vendeuse looked down at the lipstick. She looked up at Malva. She looked down again, at the twelve discarded tubes of almost-but-not-quite rose-coloured lipstick.

 

“Perhaps we could try something a little more crimson, madame?”

 

“Yes, do that,” said Malva.

 

She propped her chin up on her palm, her elbow on the high-polished counter, and surveyed the rest of the shop while the vendeuse rummaged through her stock. Surfaces gleamed, deep and watery, like magic mirrors reflecting pretty lies. The effect was expensive and disorientating, mostly, Malva suspected, to distract from the dizzying price tags.

 

The clientele were wildly assorted. There were handsome young actors and there were oligarch’s wives rendered mannequin-like with surgery. There were glamorous young businesswomen and sticky old men clinging to their rapidly de-adhesing youth. In one corner Malva could see an elegant and immensely fat mat with a hairstyle as carefully constructed as an architectural conceit, fastidiously sniffing cologne samples.

 

“Might I try this colour, madame?” asked the vendeuse hesitantly. She was holding up a tube of lipstick that resembled a rose-tinted tulip. Malva sighed and leaned forwards, her lips parted.

 

The vendeuse applied the colour with a tiny disposable make-up brush, frowning with nervousness. When she was done, she turned the side mirror towards Malva, who cried out, “Oh, no no no! Much too aubergine!” and flung her arm out in hyperbolic distress.

 

It connected with something hard and she cried out. Behind her, there was a shout, a crash of glass and then an overwhelming smell of _eau de quelque chose très cher._

Someone swore in Ingrand. Malva didn’t speak Ingrand, but a lifetime of rivalries and smalltime misogyny had left her good at recognising swearwords, and she knew when she was being called a dumb cunt.

 

“Do you mind,” she snapped, whipping round.

 

“Madame, do _you_ mind,” snarled the man behind her, and reverted to muttering in Ingrand. It was the smartly-coiffed fat man, standing in a pool of cologne, smashed glass glittering around his feet.

 

“I hope you realise,” he said icily, “how much this cost.”

 

“Be assured that I can replace it,” Malva replied with equal coldness. She wasn’t sure whether she could – she’d only just been promoted to late-night newsreader and her salary wasn’t quite all that she had hoped it would be, but she wasn’t about to plead with a man wearing glasses with scarlet spectacle frames and a lurid silk tie.

 

“I very much doubt that,” he said. “It was an experimental sample. Nevertheless, I’ll send you the bill. Not because I expect you to pay it,” he added with a sneer, “but because I think you ought to know what sort of Pokédollars you’re trifling with.” He leaned down until they were nearly nose to nose, and Malva could see the shockingly clear whites of his eyes. “I’m not sure you belong in a place like this… madame,” he added, softly.

 

Malva flushed.

 

He straightened up and nodded to the vendeuse. “You know me,” he said haughtily. “See to it. And then throw her out, a woman in such tacky leggings doesn’t know the first thing about dressing in the mornings, let alone the subtler points of maquillage.”

 

With that, he stalked out, kicking the shards of glass away in front of him.

 

Malva watched him leave, and then sat up straight in her chair and squared her shoulders.

 

“Were you hoping for subtitles?” she said to the room at large, and the clientele and staff, who had been watching the scene with great interest, turned away, murmuring.

 

“I’ll send someone to clean this up,” said the vendeuse uncomfortably.

 

“And send me his bill,” Malva added.

 

“Oh no, madame, I am quite sure he was just making a gesture of –”

 

“Just do it,” said Malva. The vendeuse curtsied, the deep score of a frown between her brows. She’ll get wrinkles if she keeps worrying like that, thought Malva. The trick is to care a little less every day about what people think about you.

 

She really did want the bill. She had no intention of paying it. She just wanted the fat old bore’s name.

 

 _Xerosic St._ _John_.

 

I’ve got my eye on you, Xerosic, she thought darkly.

 

AUTUMN

 

Malva was walking back to the office from a manicure when she spotted Diantha Lagris, the Champion of Kalos, standing before a table at the front of a café in the attitude of a shy schoolgirl, her hands clasped and held at her breasts. It was so incongruous that she walked over to take a closer look. After all, she and Diantha knew one another, or at least they were very often invited to the same parties, and that was enough acquaintanceship for her to be nosy.

 

“Salut, Dian,” she called, and Diantha’s dark head turned gracefully towards her.

 

“Oh, bonjour, Malva,” she said. Her voice was odd; Malva was used to Diantha’s perfectly articulated, perfectly confident, perfectly crisp vowels and now she was speaking in a thick, dreamy voice, as if she’d just awoken from a drug-induced slumber. She received Malva’s kissed greeting with numbed nonchalance.

 

“Ah, if it isn’t my favourite little upstart,” called a familiar voice. Malva stopped beside Diantha and stared at the three men at the table.

 

“Oh, bonjour, Xerosic,” she said. “I didn’t realise they let you out during daylight hours. Are you wearing special sun cream, to stop you turning to dust?”

 

“I didn’t realise that you wrote your own lines, Malva,” said Xerosic. “Or do you get one of the sub-editors to draft you all-purpose sass for every occasion?”

 

“I take it you two lovebirds know one another?” said Diantha, with a trace of her usual cool self-confidence.

 

“Unfortunately so,” drawled Xerosic. “Malva smashed a Prostien cologne I’d had mixed for me a few months ago, and in place of an apology she sent me the rudest IOU I have ever seen. I thought I’d be rid of her after that but then…”

 

“But then,” Malva interrupted, “your labs found themselves in need of a favourable editorial piece after the Laverre mass-hallucination scandal –”

 

“Merely a chance to explain our point of view,” said Xerosic calmly. “Merely that chance. Merely an opportunity to demonstrate that the machine had experienced a freakish malfunction, quite unusual, nothing to worry about. Of course, I called in the IOU. We arranged a little peak-time interview with the head of the labs and, do you know, the drooling masses of Kalos were so eager to have the redtop rags’ fearmongering corrected.”

 

“It does help that Seigneur du Feu looks _so_ immaculate on television,” said one of the other men at the table. “The camera loves him. I would go so far as to say that the camera is attempting to have an affair with him.”

 

Malva glanced disinterestedly at the speaker. He was a paper-pale man with eyes like mirrors and eloquent hands. Beside him sat another man, small and dark-haired, perched like a bird on the edge of his chair. Neither of them had the same bolshy presence as Xerosic. Xerosic and the dark-haired man were both smoking, their cigarette smoke forming a loose arch over the paper-pale man, who sat with his arms folded.

 

“I’m glad that all worked out for you, Malva,” said Diantha, and Malva caught the edge in her voice. So she’d been promoted after she’d interviewed Lysandre du Feu about the Holo Caster Mk II, that bizarre vision machine that had malfunctioned so nightmarishly. So what? So what if a few strings were pulled? Where were you without gratitude? What was the world coming to if no one knew how to tip once in a while?

 

Before she could say anything sufficiently bitchy, Diantha had turned away and was flashing her pearly smile at the men.

 

“Have a good afternoon, Xerosic, Hua An,” she said formally. “Malva, come by the wrap party this weekend, I’ll save you some fizz.” She kissed Malva lightly. “Doctor, I’ll see you on Tuesday?”

 

Malva caught the final tremble in her voice and thought: not so clever now, are you, Diantha? Something bad? Something incurable? Something embarrassing, like a virulent yeast infection?

 

The paper-pale man gave Diantha a brief smile, but as she left, he watched her go all the way down the street, his fingers tracing oddly sensuous shapes on the tabletop.

 

“Sit down, Malva,” said Xerosic. “Let me introduce you to my friends. You can tell us about whose backs you’ve been stabbing.”

 

WINTER

 

Malva was spending more and more time at Fleur-de-Lis Labs. In addition to her usual newsreader duties, she’d lobbied for a new post to be created in the Science and Technology section.

 

“It’s the biggest commercial lab in Kalos,” she’d argued. “We need a special correspondent for Fleur-de-Lis and the major Pokémon labs, and I’m happy to take that role on.”

 

“You’re happy to take it on because you just made it up,” said the station manager wearily. “We have an entire department devoted to the commercial labs, peopled by a team of highly trained journalists, and that’s _in addition_ to our general Pokémon department.”

 

He refused her suggestion, which was unfortunate, because Lysandre had intimated that there were benefits available for media personalities willing to work closely with the laboratory.

 

When she told Xerosic about her failure over lunch the next day, he frowned and spent an exaggeratedly long time fishing about for a pine nut embedded between his molars.

 

“Xerosic, if you’re going claw at your mouth like a dog with rabies, then do me the favour of sitting under the table and eating at a bowl.”

 

Xerosic bared all of his teeth at her.

 

“Have you ever seen that trick with the cherry stalk?” he asked her. Malva sighed.

 

“That’s nothing, dear girl. Watch this,” he said, and closed his lips around his teeth. She could make out his tongue rolling, distended his cheeks.

 

Eventually, he poked his tongue out at her.

 

“How charming,” she said, “a half-chewed pine nut. Is this what foreplay looks like in Ingrando? Apparently you think ejaculation carries the same pleasure as blowing your nose, is it possible that you think that this is what oral sex looks like?”

 

Xerosic spat the debris into his palm. “Malva, for fuck’s sake, try looking beyond the end of your nose job.”

 

She stared at the thing on his palm. Among the fragments of chewed nut, there was something tiny, glittering and black, like a mineral sample.

 

“It’s a memory card,” he said. “A prototype, but Amina’s been put in charge of its construction and assimilation and I’m pleased to say that, under her stewardship, it actually works. It’s for the Holo Caster. It can store 3D video clips.”

 

She took it gingerly from him. It was so small that she would have been able to glue it under her fingernails (today lime-green and cut into smooth ovals).

 

“How much can it store?”

 

“Oh, that’s just a trial run. It can hold about an hour, high-definition. Clear enough to ensure that there can be no possibility of mistaken identity if, say, a station head was filmed fucking a prostitute in a Far Right uniform.”

 

“Oh dear oh dear,” said Malva. “Whatever would his husband say.”

 

“Quite.” Xerosic drained his glass in one smooth swallow. “It’s just as well that the stereotype about our bad teeth is true, otherwise we would never have got it out of the hotel. He’s a suspicious man, your boss. And by the way, Malva, I’ve spent enough time in Kalos to know what _you_ all think oral sex is. Apparently, it’s talking about yourselves until you work yourselves into a froth of arousal and masturbate in front of a mirror.”

 

SPRING

 

“What the fucking shit do you mean, you can’t stop the programme airing?” Xerosic roared at her.

 

“It’s not my fucking fault! You shouldn’t have been dicking about in Geosenge during the quarantine! Half a dozen Pokémon _fucking mutated_ during the first dig! How can you expect a major news channel _not_ to investigate? I did my best!”

 

“You didn’t try hard enough!”

 

“How dare you!”

 

“How dare _you_! I _made_ you, I found you in the gutter –”

 

“You found me in a boutique –”

 

“You looked like you were _from_ the gutter –”

 

“You fat fucking whoreson –”

 

“I’ve sacrificed a _great deal_ to get you this high, you surely don’t think you got here on your mediocre talent alone –”

 

“I could have done it myself! I could have _fucked my way up_ if I felt like it. You think you’re the only one with power? You don’t know what it’s like, being a woman, you have to learn to turn your weakness to your advantage! They come sniffing round me like animals, they paw at me like animals, I can treat them like animals. Fuck this ‘by talent alone’ Tauros shit, Diantha and her so-called feminist crowd. Let me tell you how it works. You think I don’t understand what the catcalls mean, it means your stinking fucking gender is _weak_ , it’s fucking _weak_ , I could have them _dripping_ at their puny, ratty little _dicks_ if I wanted it –”

 

For the first time in all the time she had known him, Xerosic had turned pale.

 

“I would never have asked that of you,” he said. “Do you understand me? _Never_. Don’t ever talk about yourself like that.”

 

SUMMER AGAIN

 

She hadn’t seen Xerosic in weeks and weeks and weeks when she received an email from him, requesting her immediate presence at one of the Fleur-de-Lis ‘safe houses’ – one of the small houses that Lysandre owned, that sometimes held documents and sometimes held people.

 

She put on a rose-coloured lipstick and went out to meet him, her head held high above the collar of her blouse. She smoked a cigarette as she walked and she had a perfect image of herself in her head: her colour-blocked lips, her confident profile, the film noir quality of the smoke escaping her mouth. She kept on thinking about this picture-worthy image until the lingering sense of shame and sadness was gone.

 

When she rung the doorbell, it was the doctor and not Xerosic who answered.

 

“Oh good,” he said, by way of greeting. “Enter.”

 

He stepped back to let her in, and as she was walking past him, he seized her plait and dragged her head back. She gasped and tried to reach round to scratch his face, but he caught her wrist easily and twisted it. The cigarette stub fell to the floor and, from the corner of her eye, she saw the doctor’s delicate dark-shod foot grind it out. She felt his cool lips against her ear.

 

“You’re almost, almost interesting,” he said softly. “But, for some reason, he finds you fascinating. I don’t know why, but then again, I don’t know why he insists on wearing primary colours, or smoking, which, by the way, is a disgusting habit and will kill you quite soon. So play nicely.”

 

“What’s it to you?” she hissed, wriggling in the doctor’s impassable grip.

 

“He’s my friend,” said the doctor. “And I’m told you’re useful. But I always have my sedatives handy. If you annoy me.”

 

He let her go and she stumbled a few paces away from him.

 

“How’s Diantha?” she asked, and revelled when she saw the stain of pink on his cheeks, as surely as if she’d slapped him.

 

“What’s going on out there?” called Xerosic’s voice from a further room.

 

She gave the doctor a sarcastic smile and went in.

 

Xerosic did not look well. There were puckered, bruise pockets under his eyes and he had scratches on the backs of his palms – she knew that, when he was stressed, he tended to claw at himself, concentrating on the pain as a solvable problem.

 

“You,” he said when she entered. “What are you doing here?”

 

“You emailed me,” she said.

 

“I did no such thing. I was meeting –”

 

They heard the front door shut.

 

“You were meeting him?”

 

Xerosic was gawping a little. “Yes,” he said finally. “And now he’s fucked off. Typical.”

 

They stared at one another.

 

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” he said.

 

“I’ve been waiting for you to call me,” she replied, and was startled to find that this was true. She really had been waiting. She’d been in a state of half-awake abeyance for weeks.

 

Xerosic stood up and walked to the window. It was a small, mean little room that they stood in, and he seemed to fill it edge to edge like light, or an overpowering cologne. He was wearing his scarlet jacket, the one she knew so well, and it was so bright that it burned like a beacon, some kind of danger signal.

 

“I’ve been having a bit of trouble at the labs. Two of my scientists have fallen in love with one another, and I think one of the others is having an affair with Hua An. It’s… inconvenient. It’s usually a mistake to mix personal and professional. I’ve seen it go wrong often enough,” he added darkly.

 

Malva said nothing.

 

“Your lipstick is new,” Xerosic said.

 

“It’s rose.”

 

“I don’t like it.”

 

“Take it off then,” said Malva. Xerosic sighed loudly and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief.

 

“Not like that,” said Malva, and held his eyes.

 

Xerosic blinked first.

 

“Now what the fuck did I just say about personal and professional, Malva,” he muttered, but he had to lower his gaze when he said it.

 

“You also once said that I didn’t belong at a make-up counter for the lacklustre nouveau riche,” she replied. “And now look at me. All grown up. I could get a table in any restaurant.”

 

Xerosic laughed and she smiled.

 

“So what are you waiting for?” she asked. “I know you’ve been thinking about it for months. You say you made me? Well, you’d better make me up. You don’t like this lipstick? You’d better take it off. With your mouth, Xerosic. I’m your thousand dollar asset. I’m the money, honey. Let’s see you put your money where you mouth is. Come here, Xerosic. It’s about time someone told you what to do.”


	4. Chapter 4

“We should play sometime,” Bryony had said. “I’m good at chess.”

Celosia hadn’t said anything for a few moments. She’d sat quite still, meticulously refolding a paper memo. It was autumn, when the sun was burning brightly befre its last ebb, and the paper was saturated with the sunlight coming in through the high windows, glowly oddly in her hands. The memo was from Lysandre’s private box and was printed with an instruction to destroy upon reading, but Celosia needed something to look at that wasn’t Bryony.

When she judged that she had pushed not-speaking beyond its plausible length and could not reasonably delay any longer, she had said, “Yes. Let’s.”

So for the past few weeks, as the autumn tumbled into deep winter, Bryony and Celosia met during lunch breaks to play a long-running game of chess. They played with the solipsistic, closed concentration of serious chess players, their worlds temporarily reduced to a board, some carved pieces and the face of the woman opposite. Fractions of hours – quarters, fifths, halves – could go past before one of the players moved a piece. They were locked in.

On the fourth week, Bryony said, “I told you I was good, didn’t I? We’ve managed to spin this out for quite a while.”

Once again, Celosia did not reply immediately. She studied a bishop, forcing herself to be fascinated by a dent in the piece that disrupted the line of the ‘hat’.

“You’re quite good,” she said, keeping her voice as neutral as possible.

In fact, Bryony  _was_  a good and smart chess player. The problem was that Celosia was a former Kalosian chess champion and it took every last wile in her body to keep Bryony simultaneously challenged, undefeated and interested. She had been deliberately sabotaging her own game for ages now. Because she didn’t know how else she was going to hold Bryony’s attention.

The whole Bryony thing, as Celosia thought of it (or tried not to think of it) had happened almost immediately. Bryony – Dr Rose, as she had been introduced – had been brought in on a work placement from the evolutionary biology department at the École Paranormale Superieure. Xerosic had chosen her personally, from a list of applicants so long and so overqualified that half the time Xerosic narrowed down his choice and divided the applications by throwing them down the stairs and choosing the ones that landed face-up.

“This is Dr Rose,” he’d said, that fateful summer morning. “Bryony, this is Dr Cynaid.”

“You can just call me Celosia,” Celosia had said. She’d looked briefly at Bryony and then looked back at her work, because as soon as she had seen Bryony she’d thought: now that’s the kind of girl I could get obsessed over.

“You can call me Bryony,” Bryony had said, in a voice so full of energy that Celosia was surprised not to see wildflowers erupting from the slabs under her feet, conjured by the sheer vitality of her being.

“Mm,” Celosia had said, and bent her head very close to the specimen she was examining.

Her predicted obsession spun itself into shape over the following weeks. Celosia definitely thought of it as a shape being spun, manifesting with the perfect, inevitable, symmetrical beauty of a Platonic solid. She could see its edges, predict its facets, with depressing surety; unfortunately, her self-awareness didn’t make the obsession any less passionate. The Platonic solid, thought Celosia gloomily, of my massive lady-boner.

One particularly hot day in Lab 5, Bryony had been forced to pull her shirt over her head and work in nothing but her shorts and her bralet. She had shoulders like Celosia had never seen before, outside of certain old-fashioned portraits and photographs. Each one was perfectly rounded and smooth, without a trace of the collarbone bumps that contoured Celosia’s own shoulders. They looked pearly and white. Celosia desperately wanted to cup one in her hands.

“You’ve got shoulders like eggs,” she’d said, and Bryony had laughed, half-amused and half-offended.

“What’s that thing you’re wearing?” she’d added, referring to the bralet.

“It’s a bralet,” Bryony had replied, and seeing Celosia’s perplexed expression, added, “It’s like a cross between a bra and a crop top. A fashion thing, right? Put it under a cardigan and take it out clubbing. Hoist it high on the straps!” Here she’d grinned and given the bizarre thing a tug, her flawless cream breasts moving in very interesting ways. Celosia had to go outside and stand in a patch of shade until she’d calmed down.

Later that night she’d dreamt about covering Bryony’s beautiful curving shoulders and breasts in a thin layer of white chocolate, licking them clean, sucking on them until she turned them the colour of an open mouth. Later it turned into a dream of straddling Bryony’s body, lowering herself, Bryony’s pert nipples just brushing against the part between Celosia’s legs, her chest mismatchedly smeared with the wetness that Celosia produced, that she spread in little circles using two of her fingers, that she’d then lick off all over again, the sharp taste of herself mixing with the milky flavour of Bryony’s skin.

When Celosia woke up, her fingers were jammed inside her underwear, her forefinger and her middle finger squeezing the swollen nub of her clitoris between them, sleep-stroking. But, irritatingly, the first thing she thought was not the delicious dessert of Bryony’s décolletage, but ‘I’m too old to date a woman who wears a ‘bralet’, whatever that’s supposed to be’.

She was only five years older than Bryony, but it felt like a lifetime. It felt like a lifetime lived to very different values. Bryony was the most  _alive_  person she’d ever met. She made Celosia feel like something kept flat and dry between the pages of a heavy book.

It was a chess session in the autumn that finally tipped Celosia over the edge.

She was sat opposite Bryony in a quiet office near the labs, once that was occasionally hotdesked by the senior scientists. They were playing chess. Bryony was frowning at the board. Celosia was frowning at Bryony.

I wonder if I can remember, she thought, from the glimpses I have caught, what her body looks like. (Bryony was wearing a loose sweater, worried into frayed edges at the cuffs.)  It’s nice and rounded. It goes in and out in all the right places. She’d feel so good to hold, like something that would squish and resist a bit, something you’d like to really dig your hands into. She’d got a soft white tummy that she says is ‘gross’ and ‘fat’ and it looks like a god damn snowdrift in Heaven.

She absentmindedly took one of Bryony’s rooks with a pawn and disrupted Bryony’s painfully obvious strategy of a rook-and-bishop combination.

I bet even her internal organs are pearly and smooth and nice, thought Celosia. (The bit of her that was always ironically distant, that spent all of its time sighing deeply and shrugging, raised an alarmed eyebrow here.) I bet I could dig my hands right inside her, stroke the side of her liver with my palm, caress her pretty kidneys, open her up and come deep inside her –

Shit. That’s fucked up.  _Shit_.

“Bryony, I have to call it a day,” she said sharply.

Bryony dragged her hands through her hair. “Okay. Okay. Let me just- okay. I’m just going to- okay, I won’t move that, don’t worry! Arceus, you’re more of a challenge than I thought.”

“That didn’t occur to you two weeks ago?” asked Celosia drily. She was making a neat note of the chess piece positions in her notebook, the notebook she kept expressly for this purpose.

Bryony grinned. “Two weeks ago I thought you were trying to sweat me,” she said. “Now I think you’re trying to lose to me.”

Celosia was not a woman who blushed easily, but she blanched at the drop of a hat. She paled considerably now.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Me, lose to an intern? Xerosic would have a field day, he’d organise a parade just to mock me. Mable would make me give you my job.”

“If we draw, do I get a job?” asked Bryony, her eyes twinkling.  

“Behave yourself,” said Celosia, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say in the face of that twinkle.

She left Fleur-de-Lis Labs in a hurry and headed down the rue Pauline Réage.

There was a particular man in a particular room in this particular medical facility on the rue PR that she was looking for. On her way up to his office, she passed men in scrubs carting covered, glowing shapes on trolleys, high-intelligence Pokémon with oddly graceful mutations venturing gingerly beyond their wards and, in the corridor near the room she was heading towards, the celestially beautiful Champion of Kalos stomping past, apparently in a bad mood (her eyebrows looked like thunderstorm clouds gathering over the limpid pools of her eyes).

This is such a weird place to work, thought Celosia, then thought about the inside of Fleur-de-Lis and retracted her statement.

When she got to the office, she knocked on the door and entered in almost the same movement.

The doctor was slowly peeling off a pair of surgical gloves and staring into the middle distance when she entered. He swung his strange light-coloured gaze on her as soon as the door banged open, his shoulders tensing.

“Oh,” he said, “Celosia. I haven’t seen you in a long time. Do come in.”

And he forced his shoulders down.

Celosia wasn’t sure she liked the doctor, and that was because she knew that he liked her. Not in the way that he normally ‘liked’ people, which had less in common with affection and more in common with the way a snake fixated on its prey; he actually just liked her, in a fraternal way that made Celosia uncomfortable. The burden of his mild friendship was all the heavier because she knew it sprang from the fledgling similarities he sensed between them. This was why Celosia was one of the only members of the labs to have never used the doctor as her psychiatrist, or even her general practitioner.

Practically everyone else did, though, and that was why she was here.

She sat down.

“Do you want something to drink?” the doctor asked her.

“Are you going to drink anything?”

“No.”

“Well, then no, doctor, I wouldn’t, because it would be weird. You’re supposed to make that kind of small-talk offer to put people at their ease, not unnerve them even further.”

The doctor smiled with his mouth alone.

“I don’t think you’re here on a social visit, Celosia. You never come and talk to me. What is it that you want?”

Celosia had an I.Q. so high it gave her headaches but she didn’t have much low cunning and subterfuge. “I need to see the psychiatric files on the new work placements. I know Xerosic makes you give them a once-over if they’re promising, and the one I’m thinking of is promising. She’ll be on the team before the year is out.”

The doctor leaned against a chest of drawers and stared at her with his blank, sodium stare.

Celosia sighed. “Alors, should I do this in a more diplomatic and roundabout way? Xerosic is looking very rough these days, isn’t he?”

The doctor shrugged with one shoulder. “He is in love. Or in lust. Or some emotional displacement variation on those.”

This did actually momentarily derail Celosia. “Xerosic? In love?”

“Oh yes.”

“ _Xerosic_? Mr ‘Move Bitch, Get Out the Way?’ Xerosic the Great Stone God of Swears? Xerosic, so Ingrand that the Ingrands kicked him out of Ingrando for being too stiff?  _In love_?”

This time the doctor did actually smile, although he tried to suppress it. “The very same.”

Celosia leaned back in her chair so that the front legs came off the floor and blew a thoughtful raspberry. “Why is everyone tumbling  _en amour_ , doctor? I hear Aliana’s stopped worrying about whether the surgery is convincing and is just having it off right left and centre, and the Big Boss has been frankly unhinged since he got back from Calincourt, I can’t believe we hadn’t worked  _that_  one out before… and now you’re telling me  _Xerosic_  is drawing lovehearts on his copybooks?”

“Emergency sex,” said the doctor. “Oh, don’t look so sour, Celosia. It’s a normal human reaction to times of stress and peril. The body claws at the soul with its demands. Be alive! Do something! Drive me into the fire! If a writer were to write a novel of our times,” he added, “it would be a long and boring pornographic love story.”

“Stress and peril, hm,” said Celosia.

What she didn’t say was, Peril? You know that  _that_  plan has only solidified in the last few weeks. It’s just a suggestion, a possible direction. We don’t even know if we have the power to do it. We need a very powerful machine. A Legendary one.

What he didn’t say was, I just said ‘stress and peril’. I didn’t mention that you were collectively planning to kill a lot of people. I didn’t even say that I disapproved.

What she didn’t say was, Well you can wipe that knowing look off your face then.

Silence and semaphores. Normal human reactions.

Celosia remembered his electric tenseness when she’d first come in, wondered who he’d been locked in with before her arrival. It was strange to think of the doctor feeling anything at all, except possibly archly triumphant, but then again, he was human too, in this time of stress and peril. Perhaps there was a tender, patchwork-crimson heart beating under that perfectly pressed linen after all.

“Come to think of it, doctor,” she said, “you’re not looking so unclawed-at-the-soul yourself.”

The doctor went perfectly blank, like a switch-off lightbulb. And Celosia remembered that Xerosic, probably the doctor’s closest friend, had once told her that behind the bookcase in the room they sat in was a door to a private office, and in that private office was a desk, and in that desk was a drawer, which held a pistol that had only one bullet in it. Only human. She felt a sort of sucker punch of sympathy and the desire to rile him drained out of her.

“It’s Bryony Rose,” she said. “I need to see her file. Or else I’m going to go crazy. I don’t want to talk about the particulars,” she added, as his eyes lit up with an abstracted, scholarly, gruesome interest. “I know you collect oddities but I’m not going to be part of your collection. My emergency sex is my business. Just help me, doctor. I need a clue. I need a way in.”

It was a gamble but Celosia was sure the odds were in her favour. He liked her because they had a deep-down dreadful similarity, and her pain was surely mirroring his.

The doctor sat down in a chair and lifted one of his legs. He reached down to his feet and, in one fluid movement, ripped the shoelace from his shoe.

“Oh dear,” he said, “I seem to have accidentally unlaced my brogues. I shall be preoccupied for a little time with lacing these back in. Pray do try to amuse yourself while I am busy.”

Celosia leapt out of her chair. “Merci. Merci bien.”

The files were kept in a locked filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Celosia rattled at the drawers but they wouldn’t open. She crossed quickly back to where the doctor sat, fastidiously relacing, and reached into the pockets of his labcoat, and then into the pockets in his waistcoat (praying she would not have to try his trousers, and all the while trying to touch him as little as possible, her skin prickling with embarrassment and faint revulsion).

The key was in the waistcoat pocket. The doctor examined his nails, flicked an eyelet.

Celosia raced back to the filing cabinet, unlocked it and tore through the files at great speed. Bryony’s file was only a small one, but it was certainly enough.

The girl was not all milk and honey after all. The girl was a wreck. Poor baby, she thought, poor poor little aberration. You’re so dear to me.

She skimmed through the doctor's observations. _Brother killed in Nord Pas mining disaster - body found badly damaged and soiled, limbs severed... blames greed of mining company, weakness of conservation lobbying groups... haunted by thoughts of revenge... frequently uses vocabulary of cleansing, disinfecting, tidying &c during sessions... enjoys Rorshach tests, attracted to the symmetry... need for order... highly intelligent but very volatile - unbalanced by conscience... nevertheless, prime candidate for Plan Zero... _

She felt dirty for doing it, for peering into Bryony's brain like that, gently turning her thoughts over and over until she found something she could use. But she felt relieved too, knowing that Bryony was within her reach. In fact, the more she read, the more she thought that, far from being too old or too stiff for Bryony, she was perfect for her. You can be my little girl, she thought. You can be my little doll. I know you'd like that. I'll keep you tidy.

She replaced the file, locked the cabinet and turned. The doctor was still facing away from her, but he had finished relacing his shoe and was sitting with his ankle balanced on the opposite knee. One of his hands was held at eye height, the palm flat, perfectly still. Celosia dropped the key into it.

“I won’t embarrass you with gratitude,” she said, and turned to go. But she stopped at the door.

“Doctor,” she said, “I know your ethics are, ah,  _flexible_ , shall we say, but don’t you think that was rather dangerous? I could have looked through the files for any one of your important patients. I could have found Xerosic’s files. I could have found Lysandre’s!”

The doctor turned his head slowly round to face her. “What do you and Bryony do together?”

Celosia tightened her lips.

“Play chess.”

The doctor nodded slowly. “And how is the game going?”

“She has been attempting to distract me with a rook, castling her King, but planned to breach my defences with her bishop. I took her rook and now she finds herself at an impasse that I could break in three moves.”

The doctor passed two chalky fingers over his lips. “And what did you eat for breakfast this morning?”

Celosia’s mouth opened, then she hesitated. The doctor narrowed his eyes.

“No? What shirt did you have on yesterday? Can’t remember that either? The number of trees outside Fleur-de-Lis, which you see every day? The last message Lysandre sent you? What you will cook for dinner? The last Pokémon you examined? Blank after blank?” He turned away, but she could hear the smile in his voice. “No, Celosia, I do not think you would have looked at anything else. Nothing else exists for you, for now.”


End file.
